A little boy shows an exciting new perspective on the world in "Dad and Me in the Morning." There's a beautiful illustration on the cover of the sun lights up the leaves in a tree behind their house. But it's the simple details of the boy's life that create the book's real message. "I slid out of bed, put on my hearing aids and my clothes, and took my flashlight. Then I tiptoed down the long hall."
Author Patricia Lakin never uses the word deaf, but she describes all the other senses the boy uses on this special morning. To wake up his father, "I flicked on my flashlight so I could read his lips." He's knows his father is ready to go because "I could feel the clomp of Dad's feet coming down the stairs." The boy's alarm clock will wake him up by flashing a bright light. And the secret signal he shares with his father is a warm squeeze of his hand.
The boy is excited about something outside that he doesn't want to miss. His dad brings his sweater, and the boy signs "Hurry!" There's cold air and grey skies, since it's early in the morning. But they walk down a dirt road that leads to a nearby beach.
There's gorgeous watercolors by Robert G. Steele which bring the story to life. One shows their house in a tree-covered valley, by a blue ocean under a vast blue sky. Another drawing captures the purple light in their house, with a soft orange glow outside. There's a soft mix of faint grays and blues as the pair walks down the beach in the morning. But the most spectacular drawing fills two pages with a brilliant sunrise, with orange clouds above the horizon and a spectrum of colors in the ocean waves.
It wasn't the hermit crabs they'd come to see, or the seagull dropping a shell onto the rocks. "Dad and Me in the Morning" captures their anticipation of waiting on the beach for the colors in the sky - and a father and son sharing a warm moment together. There's a few matter-of-fact details about their life together - like how the boy's father only needs to mouth his words, because the boy can read lips. But the book makes a conscious decision to focus the story instead on all the wonders of the world outside.
Cold air hits the boy's face as he opens the door. The boy spots the sky turning pink, purple, orange, and yellow. The sun warms the boy face, and he leans against his father's shoulder. "Let come back here," the boy signs. "Just you and me."
"Love to," the Dad signs back.